Suzette Mitchell
Dr Suzette Mitchell is a gender and development specialist with experience across the NGO, commercial contracting and government sectors, and in the United Nations system. Suzette joined International Women's Development Agency Inc (IWDA) as Executive Director in August 2003. Previously Suzette has worked as a gender and development specialist trainer and program coordinator. She was employed as the External Relations Specialist for UNIFEM, the United Nations Development Fund for Women in New York in 2001 and worked for United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Vietnam from 1998-2000.
Suzette was on the Executive of the Australian Council for Women in the lead up to the Beijing World Conference on Women and during this time she worked as the gender advisor for the Australian Council For Overseas Aid. Suzette's PhD thesis is on the impact of the UN Beijing Conference for Women. In March 2005 she was part of the official Australian delegation to the 49th Session of the Commission on the status of Women to mark 10 years since the Beijing Conference.
What a reconciled Australia looks like to me.
To me a reconciled Australia is represented by an empowered healthy Indigenous Woman, who owns her land and house, has access to decision making in all her life choices, employment options and has a supportive and respectful relationship with her family and community. As an Indigenous Woman she can be proud of her culture.
As a White Australian Woman I value her contribution as a unique and critical aspect of Australian culture, and for its leadership for the future. I feel responsible for articulating my complicity in a society that has valued the denigration of our sisters and brothers. I also see a role for myself in working collaboratively with Indigenous Women in a way that assists their access to decision making roles that ensure their equal and valued participation in a true and just Australia.
I have lived most of my adult life committed to issues of injustice and working as a woman, on women's issues, particularly for women who face injustice, violence, poverty, abuse of human rights and inequality in all forms. It is from this perspective that I give my views on strategies to create a reconciled Australia.
Looking at the way in which the struggle for equal rights for women has grown in my lifetime, I can see some areas where the struggle parallels that for Indigenous Peoples. In some ways the women's struggle can provide some lessons - positive and negative. White women's struggles have had a headstart - we got the right to vote decades before Indigenous Peoples in this country, yet we still only represent 25% in parliament, equal pay still has not been reached, violence is pervasive, and this is for 52% of the population. So how do we ensure de jure and defacto equality for Indigenous People - and in particular Indigenous Women whose statistics in all these areas are far more deplorable that they are for White Women.
I feel that a reconciled Australia needs to begin with an acknowledgement of injustice. To begin to reconcile, there needs to be a formal admission of past injustices. This means a piece of paper, but represents so much more. Many countries of the world have Treaties that acknowledge the dispossession and mistreatment of its Indigenous Peoples. We need many pieces of paper but more so we need to translate paper to reality so that the figures of life expectancy, maternal mortality, people in custody, malnutrition, education, violence and poverty are no different for Indigenous women and men than they are for any other Australians. There needs to be real policy with real resources, supported by real consultative mechanisms that have a true commitment to ending systemic inequality and injustice.
I want a reconciled Australia to be more than just equal statistics though, I want it to recognise, value and nurture the integrity and strength of Indigenous People's and their culture. I want a modern Australia to learn from the management of Indigenous Peoples relationship with the land and the community - a sense of place. I want to play a role in making Australia a great place for Indigenous women and men to live with equality, opportunity and respect, with their culture valued as a key aspect of Australian culture.
Suzette Mitchell
